Thanks to a post at OpenSourceCommunity.org, I came across a conversion tool to allow you to import the SMF 1.1 database into a phpBB 3 site. Information about the conversion tool can be found in a forum post at phpbb.com. By the way, the script is still in beta, meaning that it works but you might find some bugs since it is not fully tested.
Last weekend, both Linux Today and Linux.com provided links and excerpts to an article I posted here at CMS Report. You can see some of the stats on my newly quantified site at quantcast.com.
Steven Peck, associated with the Drupal project, wrote about an article he came across regarding a comparison of the vBulletin forum and Drupal's forum. The article is titled, Goodbye vBulletin, Part 1: Reasons to Switch. The author of the article writes:
The aim of this article is not to poke holes, or say ‘vBulletin sucks’, but to provide constructive criticism of a successful product, proving that vBulletin is not always the best choice. In places the article compares vBulletin to Drupal, this is the platform The Webmaster Forums will be switching to and represents many of the things vBulletin should—in our humble opinion—aspire to.
Mr. Peck's reaction to the article (and my emphasis in bold):
Now this was a interesting. A well written article on why one site is switching over to use Drupal's built in forum rather then continue to use vbulletin.
In other words, Peck and many of us that pay attention to how the forum applications stack up against CMS native forums don't see too many articles like this. It is rare to see someone using a standard forum application such as vBulletin, SMF, or phpBB switch over to Drupal primarily for its forum functionality.
If you are reading this post, then congratulations...you are now seeing CMS Report on its new server (a Virtual Private/Dedicated Server). As I tweak the VPS in the following weeks, I may fall back on the old server from time to time but for the most part, I'm home. Today officially ends my grand-experiment of running a moderately busy Drupal site on the cheap.
So, Python isn't really a CMS topic unless you're a Plone user. However, as my world at work slowly moves from Python to Java as the language of choice...I'll promote this underdog open source language anytime. From the IBM developerWorks site:
"It can happen anywhere, at any time. You’re doing your job, minding your own business, and it suddenly dawns on you: you’re the company’s webmaster."
--Shane Schick, "Accidental webmasters rejoice – help is on the way", GlobeandMail.com, September 5, 2007
A few months ago I mentioned that I was hosting my site using a "budget shared hosting plan through my reseller site which is comparable to the hosting plans offered by GoDaddy". In that same article, I also mentioned that although I prefer to run my sites on a Virtual Private/Dedicated Server (VPS/VDS), I wanted to try experimenting with the cheap shared hosting plans despite the plans not offering full MySQL functions such as CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE. For the most part, my sites have been running fine on the shared hosting plans but I wanted better control (oh how I miss Linux command line via secure shell). So, I began searching for a better reseller hosting plan. Unfortunately, my search for the perfect reseller host plan still continues.
I thought my hosting requirements were pretty simple. I wanted a reseller hosting plan that provided CPanel, PHP5, MySQL5, secure shell, and a license to a client billing system such as ClientExec. Oh and I wanted to be sure the hosting plans provided were Drupal friendly. While I host more than just Drupal sites I've found that if the server is configured properly to run Drupal then it can run almost any other PHP-based CMS out there. All in all I wanted a shared hosting plan where I spent less time managing the server, yet had the controls I needed via a Linux shell. Simple enough right? In fact I thought I found a great reseller plan through ResellerZoom (RZ). However, after spending most of my weekend hours trying to work it all out, I've come to the conclusion I'm still looking for something that works better.
If the project leaders and users of your favorite content management system are still debating when they should drop PHP 4 support, it looks like the PHP development team has helped make that decision for them. PHP.net just announced the End of Life for PHP 4. Starting in 2008, only security updates on a case-by-case basis will be provided...and PHP 4 is dead in August 2008.
During the past couple years I have recommended to people that they host their Drupal sites on a virtual private server (VPS) instead of a shared hosting plan. While a large number of people do not have problems running Drupal under shared hosting plans, I have always felt that there are less headaches with using a VPS to host your sites. For example, with a VPS I don't have to worry whether the shared hosting plan gives me the necessary MySQL privileges needed by Drupal (especially CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES and LOCK TABLES). From time to time, you also hear from people with "Drupal friendly" shared hosting plans eventually find that their hosting company isn't so friendly toward their Drupal site. Planet Drupal contributor, Clancy Ratliff, is one of the most recent examples for having a host provider not really happy she is using Drupal. So I often ask myself, is shared hosting for Drupal really worth the trouble?
I don't know if shared hosting is worth the trouble but a chain of events have brought me to giving shared hosting another chance for my Drupal sites. Last month, I pushed my VPS so close to the bleeding edge that it became unstable. While I was able to get my sites back online, the downtime clearly told me it was time to move my sites to a new server. While most visitors observed a performance improvement for my Drupal sites since the server migration, it's only now that I'm letting the cat out of the bag. For the past week, CMSReport.com has been under a shared hosting plan and not a VPS. I'm currently running my site using a budget shared hosting plan through my reseller site which is comparable to the hosting plans offered by GoDaddy.
I don't know how long I'll keep my site on a shared hosting plan but I am currently enjoying a break from the work, worry, and experimentation that comes with administration of a VPS. While I may go back to a VPS, I thought it would benefit some newbies and other Drupal users my experiences and thoughts on migrating my sites from a VPS back to a shared hosting plan.